


Human

by Sakira_hime



Category: Naruto
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-08
Updated: 2017-07-21
Packaged: 2018-11-11 03:18:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11140029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sakira_hime/pseuds/Sakira_hime
Summary: Three years after Pain's attack, Tsunade's disappearance and Danzou's subsequent appointment as Hokage, Sakura infiltrates Oto under Danzou's orders. Her objective? Kill Orochimaru. This becomes a little difficult when Sasuke is the one to find her. But she isn't the young girl he remembers.





	1. Throw Me Away

**Chapter 1**

**Throw Me Away**

 

_Draw back, release, destroy. Draw back, release, destroy._

She practically flew down the darkened corridors, chanting those four words again and again any time she met an enemy. They could not stop her, not this time.

_Draw back, release, destroy._

She cut each one down without mercy, without a hint of regret. She couldn’t feel those things now. She grinned as another stepped into her path.

_Draw back, release, destroy._

He fell as easily as the hordes before him, nothing but splinters beneath her cold fury, and she pushed forward.

_Draw back, release, destroy._

She sensed him long before she saw him, and the tiny spark of familiarity caught her off guard for just a second. And then he was upon her, his blood red eyes burning with a cold and silent rage.

_Draw back, re-_

Her mind went blank and she attacked on pure instinct, knowing that the man before her would kill her without hesitation. How she knew was of no importance; the sense of vague nostalgia disappeared entirely, leaving her empty and cold.

_Draw back, release, destroy._

His brow furrowed. He hadn’t expected her to attack. Did he know her? Did it matter? No. Only her mission mattered. She launched herself at him, keeping her eyes trained on the lower half of his pale face. Some dark, quiet voice whispered that she shouldn’t meet his gaze. If she did, she’d die. So she charged, unloading blow after blow, numbly aware that her knuckles were bleeding from the punches he deflected with a blade. She wouldn’t heal them.

No matter. She’d bled a lot more than this, with no chakra in her system, and she’d survived. She needed her chakra for _him_.

The snake.

His fist darted out, aiming for her right temple and she jerked away. But she hadn’t moved fast enough. His glove caught a few loose strands of dark brown hair and caught, and her wig fell to the ground with a muted thump.

He paused, withdrawing his hand. He straightened.

Stared.

Then he opened his mouth, but she crouched and drove her fist into the ground, and it gave way in ear-splitting cracks and shudders, and he leapt backwards. To safety.

“Sakura.”

Her head snapped up. She knew that name. Her heart began to pound in her chest and her breathing turned ragged. She lifted her eyes to his. She knew... what?

“Who-”

She felt a spike in his chakra that was too fast for her to anticipate. Before she could react, he attacked. And she knew only the dark embrace of unconsciousness.

**~**

Sasuke watched with keen eyes as the pinkette slowly shifted, her slumped head lifting and gloved fingers flexing against the restraints around her wrists.

“Ah, our little guest seems to have come to.”

Sasuke gave no hint that he’d heard the slippery voice that was barely above a hiss. His dark eyes merely followed his ‘master’s’ movements as the snake stepped closer.

“… throw… way…”

“Yes, little one, I’ll throw you away once I’m done with you,” Orochimaru breathed in fascination, his eyes glued to his prisoner. Following his gaze, Sasuke spotted the edge of what appeared to be an intricate tattoo on her chest. No, not a tattoo. Was that a-?

“Seal,” Orochimaru voiced, yellow eyes dancing in the dimly lit room.

“I don’t recognise this. I wonder if the pretty little thing knows.” His smile was a twisted, evil slash across his face as he peered down at the prisoner like she was his next meal.

“Shall we find out?” Orochimaru murmured, mostly to himself as he took a few steps forward and sank to the ground in front of her. Sasuke tried not to recoil outwardly as Orochimaru’s long, pale fingers brushed pink hair back, exposing her tense face.

“Keiru,” he called, the one summoned appearing at the door within a few seconds.

“Orochimaru-sama,” the large man said in a low gruff.

“I dislike getting my hands dirty like this, you know what to do,” Orochimaru said plainly and stepped back to allow the man forward. Sasuke wanted to rip his sickening sneer from his unshaven face as he leered down at her, popping his knuckles menacingly. He knelt down and grabbed a fistful of pink hair, yanking her head back viciously. Pulling out a blood-rusted kunai, he dragged the sharpened tip down her throat and chest, stopping just below the swirling lines of the seal. Sasuke grit his teeth hard as several droplets of blood disappeared beneath her ruined uniform.

“You awake yet, Pink?” Keiru prodded, his hand driving the kunai further down, tearing the remainder of her shirt. Sasuke’s eyes narrowed at the size of the seal on her chest; it wasn’t like his Curse Seal. It spanned across her chest and onto her shoulders, even vanishing beneath her blood-soaked chest wrappings. Keiru clicked his tongue impatiently and glanced at her limp legs. Without a second thought, he rammed the kunai into her thigh, the blade disappearing to the hilt as blood spattered and stained the floor. She didn’t even flinch when Keiru yanked the blade out and dragged its point down her thigh, splitting her skin as he went.

“Don’t die, Pink. It’s just a flesh wound,” Keiru whispered roughly, as he pulled the kunai out and admired its new colour.

“Flesh… wound…”

Keiru’s head snapped towards the pinkette’s face, as did Orochimaru’s. Sasuke didn’t need to move his gaze; he’d already been watching her face. Before Keiru’s kunai had sliced through her skin, she had already opened her eyes; they stared fixedly at the ceiling, not even wincing when her thigh was shredded.

“What was that?” Keiru demanded bemusedly, rising to his feet. She spoke again, her voice hollow and monotonous.

“Flesh wound,” she mumbled. “With mitigation, it will fade. Should I… assume that someone hears me when I pray…?” Her voice was steady but slow, her words slurred and almost incoherent. It didn’t sound like her, nor did it sound as though she was speaking to anyone in the room.

“Love… full of hate,” she continued, her slurs becoming clearer, more... sinister. She lowered her head, tilting it slightly. “Don’t you love… how I break?”

“Huh, she’s broken,” Keiru whispered disappointedly, swinging the end of his kunai on his index finger. Orochimaru sighed, catching Sasuke’s attention.

“I’m feeling tired, I think I’ll retire if she’s not up to coherent speech. Keiru, I’ll leave my young apprentice in charge,” Orochimaru announced, leaving with a nod. The malice in Keiru’s eyes doubled, putting the usually calm Uchiha on edge.

“Now, shall we have a little more fun? Now it’s just you, me, and Sasuke-kun.”

Her shoulders twitched at Keiru’s words, her head snapping up, capturing Sasuke’s eyes in a blazing glare of what he thought would have been dead green eyes. He winced inwardly at the tiny flash of recognition he found there, staring back at him like the old Sakura before the seal on her chest glowed purple, and she choked as if it were suffocating her. It was gone in an instant, the emotion, as though controlled by a flip switch. Her eyes stared blankly, wide and doll-like. Dead. He tried to ignore the lurch his heart gave, squashing the rising panic. Spitting up an obscene amount of blood, she clenched her bruising jaw shut, her throat emitting an eerie growl.

“U-Uchi-ha S-Sasu-ke,” she stammered quietly, her voice a beastly growl. He tried to deny the flips his stomach did when she spoke his name. Three years, and he didn’t miss that she’d omitted the affectionate ‘-kun’. He unconsciously took a step forward, and the seal spread over her stomach, forcing more blood from her mouth. She locked eyes with him again, this time shocking him with her so very familiar green gaze, full of uncharacteristic cruelty.

“You’re gonna let them throw me away, aren’t you?” she mused, her vivid green eyes mad and accusing as she struggled against her bonds. The chakra-blocking chains kept her from using any jutsu, so why was there an ominous metallic bending sound echoing off the walls? He eyed her curiously, ignoring the twisting in his gut when Keiru pressed his chapped lips to her neck.

“She won’t respond, huh?” he said thoughtfully, pulling her head back further and dragging his disgusting face too far down for Sasuke’s liking. But he needn’t have worried; her eyes slid shut for a second before snapping open, blazing with inhuman fury. She moved, her lips skimming his ear for less than a moment, and if it weren’t for his Sharingan, Sasuke would have missed it. Keiru screeched in pain, yanking his face away and glaring at her in shock, where she sat innocently pouting with the flesh of half of his ear between her lips.

“You bitch!” he snarled, hurling a giant fist at her face. His knuckles made contact with a sickening crunch, but oddly enough, it wasn’t her jaw that cracked. Howling in pain, Keiru clutched his distorted fist to his chest, howling profanities, while Sasuke continued to watch the pinkette. Her eyes never left him; all that changed was the light in them. Her breathing turned laboured, and she struggled forward, pulling on her creaking restraints.

“Screwed up, used up, crumbled lying on the floor,” she screamed, her entire demeanour shifting to utter darkness. “Fucked up… Shut up! All you did back then was crawl.”

She was screaming at herself, the seal growing bigger and brighter. Sasuke felt the beginnings of fear prickle at what might have happened to her while he was gone when she spoke again, this time directed at him.

“I’m… feeling weak… missing parts… incomplete… -suke, you let them throw me away-,” her words were cut off by a terrifying screech of pain, followed by a twisted cackle, all from the shackled woman in front him. He made to step forward but she moved first, the sound of twisting steel filling his ears as he stood frozen, watching as she leapt forward, tackling Keiru and using her fingers to rip his throat open. He was dead before they hit the ground. Immediately, she spun around and launched her lithe figure at him, just missing his right shoulder. He used her momentum and pinned her to the ground beneath him.

He locked eyes with her and put her to sleep, her small body slumping and going limp. He restrained her again and left her with Keiru’s bloodied corpse for company.

He paused out in the hallway, sensing the snake’s presence before spotting him not too far from where the door now stood closed.

“She is Sakura.”

Not a question, but Sasuke didn’t bother confirming or denying it. He simply turned and made to leave.

“She came to kill me.”

Sasuke fought the urge to roll his eyes.

“Is that a surprise?” he mused sarcastically. Orochimaru rasped a chuckle.

“No, but I am surprised that she is the one to do it. I wonder who her master is.”

“Are you asking me to find and eliminate your would-be assassin’s master?”

“I have a good idea who her master is.”

Silence. Then-

“There aren’t many shinobi talented enough to create such a complex seal. Apart from myself, there may only be two.”

“So?”

“Don’t be so cold, Sasuke-kun,” he coaxed. “I’m only trying to figure out what happened to our sweet pinkette. Are you not curious?”

“No.”

Sasuke turned his back and took a few steps before Orochimaru spoke again.

“I’m going to have to punish her for the attack on Oto, and killing so many of my experiments,” Orochimaru warned. “I hope you won’t have any... issues.”

Sasuke lifted one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug.

“I don’t care,” he drawled.

His stomach knotted in a way it hadn’t in years. He’d seen what Orochimaru’s punishments usually entailed but he convinced himself he didn’t care. He could do that.

Right?

~

It had been nearly three weeks since she had infiltrated Oto and slaughtered too many of the snake’s experiments to count. Sasuke hadn’t missed a single opportunity to train. If training happened to fall on certain days where the snake asked Sasuke to accompany him to Sakura’s ‘punishment’, it was purely coincidence. The Uchiha did not stoop to ‘avoiding’, though a small voice that sounded too much like a certain someone would often berate him for it. Avoiding her. He had nothing to say to her, nothing he wished to tell her. Not in her present state, anyway.

He’d planned on doing just that, and he strapped his blade to his back and made for the door. He was late today.

Too late.

A bloodcurdling screech tore through the silence in the hideout, echoing off stone floors and clay walls and ringing violently in his head. He braced a hand on the doorframe to steady himself and turned his head to where the voice had come from. Her voice. Two floors down, in the eastern cavern. The snake’s ‘laboratory’.

_Turn and leave._

He could do that. He put one foot in front of the other and made for the exit.

_You’d leave her again?_

Yes. He’d done it before, why not again.

_You never deserved to be saved._

He hadn’t wanted saving. Not by Naruto. And definitely not by her.

_Is that why you’re going to her?_

His eyes shot to the ground where his feet were indeed moving east, not west, each step bringing him closer to the lab. To her.

Had the cavernous excuse of a lab always been this far from his room? He walked alone along the winding tunnels, his footsteps his only company in the silence that seemed to crackle around him in the aftermath of that scream. He again ignored the hammering of his heart as he went further and further into the bowels of Orochimaru’s hideout.

He finally turned the last corner and faced a shut door with a grim sort of determination. He would go inside. He would see what she was enduring. He would leave. He would convince everyone once and for all that he had nothing within him for anyone from his past, from what once was home. Nothing for her.

He decided not to mention that he, himself, was among the many he wished to convince. Not even silently.

He pushed the door open and was instantly met with the sting of sterilised alcohol and blood in his sensitive nose. He blinked the tears from his eyes and walked in.

The snake was there, looming over a limp figure strapped to one of the sturdier examination tables. Her hair was unbound now. He stared and stared at the sheer length of her pink hair. She’d preferred short hair since the snake had given him the curse mark, hadn’t she? Was she so far gone that she didn’t even realise it was longer than she’d ever had it?

He shook the thought from his head. He didn’t care. The fact that he noticed, and remembered enough to suggest she was anything other than a loose end was a testament to his mental capacity for detail and memory.

That’s what he told himself when he awoke in the hours before dawn, drenched in sweat and tangled in his sheets and trying to erase the image of Itachi smiling at him.

He stepped forward and didn’t bother clearing his throat. No doubt the snake had heard Sasuke the second he stepped in the lab’s direction. So he stood and watched. Waiting.

“She is strong,” Orochimaru murmured, and Sasuke wasn’t entirely sure the snake was addressing him. He wouldn’t have commented anyway, so he simply dropped his gaze to the unconscious woman below.

“Stronger than I anticipated.” That was surprising; that Orochimaru’s calculations could have been wrong was something that happened seldom enough that no one in living memory could testify to the contrary.

“Her mind is a fortress,” he continued, eyes sparkling with a curious malevolence Sasuke wished to destroy. The snake eyed her in a way that made Sasuke’s skin crawl. “She does this often.”

Sasuke shot him a quizzical look.

“I ask her about her mission, her master and accomplices,” he explained. “’Kill you, Sight-Stealer and shadows’, she tells me. But ask her name or what she knows of the Nine Tails and…” He trailed off, waving a hand at her seemingly sleeping form.

“What lurks beneath this pretty skin, dear?”

Sasuke didn’t want to admit that he was curious as well. Orochimaru tilted his head in thought, his black sheet of hair sliding forward.

“Sasuke-kun,” he said, his voice barely a whisper across her body. “Say something to her.”

Sasuke did no such thing.

“Her name, perhaps,” Orochimaru pressed. “Or a word, a phrase she connects with only you.”

Sasuke fought the urge to swallow. Orochimaru interrupted.

“And I’ve already tried your name.”

He hadn’t thought his name would rouse her. He wondered distantly if her lack of consciousness was part of her seal. A failsafe. He wondered decidedly less distantly if her seal had a more permanent failsafe.

A kill switch.

He shoved the thought along with its implications from his mind. He associated nothing with her; not home nor childhood or memories. He didn’t know what could mean enough to her to wake her. And surely the seal’s creator would have implanted a vastly more difficult key, as Orochimaru seemed to put it.

Sasuke inclined his head an inch: Kabuto was coming. Sasuke could leave. Thank God.

_Thank you, Sakura._

Sasuke had to swallow the bile that threatened to rise along with those words and spun on his heel, leaving in silence.

It was much later when he wondered why he’d felt relieved at the sound of Kabuto’s approach; why he’d felt he was charged to stand over her and watch. Just watch.

And why the memory of that night made him sick to his stomach.


	2. Liar

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry that this one is kinda long, but I had to fit a couple scenes in here that are important for the progression of the plot. As always, this chapter was edited (and greatly improved) by the incomparable Sahar-Chan, without whom I would just not bother writing... Enjoy!

**Chapter 2**

**Liar**

Sasuke was back.

He hadn’t even berated himself for once again following the dimly lit passageways that brought him to the lab.

To her.

He had, however, ignored the tug he’d felt upon waking, as though some invisible hook lay buried deep in his chest and urged him forward with the gentle luring promise of... something. He violently shoved the memory away, his eyes focusing on her too-still body. Was she-?

“Hello again, Sasuke-kun,” came a hiss from beyond the rows and rows of bookcases looming in the depths of the lab. Sasuke didn’t jump or flinch; he’d known the snake would be here. He’d felt the poisonous pulse of chakra before he’d even stepped through the door. He’d taken a moment to let his eyes adjust: the stark difference between the darkness of the winding passageways and the cold brightness of Orochimaru’s lab made the Uchiha’s sensitive eyes blur with the sting of tears.

That was what Sasuke had hated most about Oto. The darkness he was accustomed to. He’d lived within its soothing embrace for years now, relying on its tendrils to keep him hidden from enemies and shielded from pain. It was the light he hated, _this_ light.

White and unyielding, it showed no mercy. It was frigid and empty. Cruel. There was nowhere to hide, no corner or pocket of solace. It was a watching light, one no one could escape. And he hated it.

He hated it especially for the bruises and gashes and cuts it illuminated across her pallid skin, laid almost entirely bare atop the stone slab. He would have argued that he hated it for forcing him to look, but that was a different kind of hate: she looked dead, and he hated looking at corpses. But this hate, this hate was black and rotting. This hate grew with every finger-shaped bruise and jagged scar. It grew and grew and grew until it was a fury he’d never known before then.

It reminded him so much of the countless corpses he’d had to walk past, walk _over_ , when whoever had found him had led him from the mass grave that was once his home.

It reminded him that he’d almost been the one to kill her, maybe leave marks and bruises and scars just like the ones she bore now.

A soundless shift in the air around him caught his attention. The snake was approaching, bearing in his arms instruments the use of which Sasuke was determined not to find out. Carefully, almost lovingly, the snake laid the assortment of metals and gears and spikes across the table alongside her battered body.

“Will you stay today?” The snake was becoming bolder, he noticed. It had been a month and still she’d revealed nothing. Still no one had come for her. Not Kakashi, not the Yamanaka girl. Not even the dobe. What the hell did that mean? From what Sasuke remembered, Naruto had always been freakishly protective of her, had always been the first to launch head first into any rescue mission, benign or otherwise. Hell, hadn’t the idiot been chasing him? When did Sasuke stop noticing his futile attempts at ‘rescue’? When had they stopped? Damn, he didn’t even know.

“You look troubled, Sasuke-kun.”

Sasuke didn’t give him the satisfaction of a reply, only sliding a cool, flat stare his way. His eyes quickly slipped back to the woman on the table, where they lingered almost curiously. Sasuke itched to know what had happened, and though he would vehemently deny it, he couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to _her_. What, who, had done this to her? And what was _this_? A seal, the snake had remarked. Was he right? And if he was, what kind of seal had this much power over someone? Sasuke had barely recognised her, even with the aid of his Sharingan, and it had taken his finger hooking on a strand of brown hair to reveal who she truly was. Or had been, once.

“I’m going to start,” the snake warned, turning a sharpened scalpel over in his long, pale fingers, yellow eyes fixed on Sasuke’s impassive face. Sasuke merely shot him a look that said “What are you waiting for?” before turning his gaze back to her.

_Her_.

Why could he not even think of her name?

When he’d first laid eyes on her in the entrance tunnels, raw shock had pulled her name from his lips before he could stop it. But never again. Not even in the safety of his mind would he utter those three syllables. They felt like a curse, heavy and toxic. And he somehow couldn’t bring himself to say them, out loud or otherwise. He mentally shook himself and found he was in the present again. How easily his mind slipped into thought lately.

He caught the twitch before the snake did. Or so he’d thought. It was tiny, barely there but there nonetheless, dancing above her shattered knuckles. Orochimaru’s surgical blade hovered above the deep burgundy ink of the seal just below her collarbone, frozen and waiting. Did she sense his intentions? Did the seal sense them? Was it the seal that controlled her almost invisible movements, rallying strength to defend its host and by extension, itself? So many questions.

“Fascinating,” Orochimaru breathed. What exactly was fascinating, he didn’t say, though Sasuke thought he knew the gist of it. If anything, it ran along the lines of Sasuke’s own theories. He tensed, however, when the blade inched closer, glinting in the unforgiving brightness as it neared the seal which, Sasuke realised with a jolt, was more scar than ink. As though the seal had been drawn into her very skin, possibly in her own blood. He fought the grimace that threatened to twist his stoic expression and looked closer.

The seal was… breathing? Indeed, the exaggerated swirls and ancient tongue seemed to expand and contract across her skin, as though it were inhaling and exhaling. Alive. The thousand possible implications drove Sasuke back a step, which he managed to cover with a semblance of vague disinterest.

Smooth.

“The seal,” Orochimaru muttered. “It’s using her.” Sasuke’s eyes widened imperceptibly and he leaned forward. How could he tell?

“Here,” the snake pointed, having seemingly read Sasuke’s silent question. “This symbol is from a language long forgotten.”

The symbol in question was a simple one, no different from the others and not in any way outstanding by comparison. A dark brow flicked up in question and the snake finally seemed inclined to explain.

“In rough translation, it means ‘connected’.”

The silence that followed his words rang with the unspoken end of his explanation and Sasuke asked, “And the direct translation?”

A deliberate, malicious smile followed by: “‘Parasite’.”

Slowly, so slowly that word dropped into place, like a stone dropped into a pond.

_Plunk._

‘Parasite’.

The word swam around his mind as the ripples ebbed and calmed, and it floated to the surface, cold and dead.

‘Parasite’.

_Wonderful_ , he thought cruelly, _a parasite for a parasite._ He internally winced. That wasn’t true. It was something he’d convinced himself of when he found no real reason to end her the night he’d left.

_Annoying. Useless._

_Parasite._

The words were insidious, lies he’d crafted to blind himself to everything but vengeance. And now he’d have his vengeance. Not all of it; the Leaf would still exist. But he knew precisely what to do to make that cease to be true. He’d hated her for loving him. He’d never wanted to be loved. He wanted power, and the unyielding ability to wield it.

He never wanted her.

_Liar_ , a small, insignificant voice whispered. He clenched his jaw. He wasn’t lying.

He wasn’t lying.

Or he hadn’t been, then.

Could that have possibly changed since then?

No. _No_ , he told himself. He was made to destroy, not _be_ destroyed. And that, _wanting_ , he’d seen it destroy too many people. He wasn’t stupid.

He would concede that he had changed now that he knew the truth about Itachi, about everything. But he wouldn’t lose himself.

He pursed his lips and eyed the instrument in Orochimaru’s hand, barely an inch from her throat now, the distance disappearing quickly. Sasuke tensed, the air around them seemed to coil with purpose until it was too tight to breathe. Her scarred chest dipped with a long breath and her eyes flew open, zeroing in on his like she’d known where he’d been standing all along.

Her piercing stare rooted him to his spot and it burned. God, it burned. Tiny flickers of heat licked into his skin, driving deep and singeing his very bones. He forced himself not to break eye contact, but it was hard. She knew it.

Her dried, split lips pulled into a grin. But he hadn’t seen this one yet.

He’d seen her smile, yes, but they were variations that lay on opposing ends of different spectrums: malice and joy, defeat and raw excitement. He’d seen those that she reserved just for him; the smiles she gave freely whenever she saw him look at her. He’d seen them all. Or he’d thought he had.

“Don’t you have anything better to do?” she rasped, eyes fixing now on the ceiling above the snake, whose yellow eyes now glittered with excitement, and the obscenely sharp object in his hand. Sasuke didn’t blink and willed his heart to slow, his expression betraying none of the torment he felt inside.

“You’re always here,” she noted, her eyes sliding shut. “It’s like you enjoy seeing me bleed.”

“I don’t think so,” the snake said, his cruel smile widening impossibly. She didn’t open her eyes, but cocked an eyebrow, her grin slipping from her face. Sasuke wanted to jam the scalpel into the hollow of his throat. He tensed, not wanting to hear what the snake said next.

“I think your presence means a great deal to Sasuke-kun.”

Sasuke didn’t miss the curl of her lip at the suffix that had once seemed permanently attached to his name. Coming from Orochimaru, it was disturbing but not to the point where Sasuke actually gave a damn.

“Soon,” she crooned, eyes still shut as the corners of her mouth tilting contentedly. “Soon your blood will stain my hands and my master will reward me.”

A chill shot down Sasuke’s spine. Did she mean Orochimaru? Or him?

“And whose blood is that, little cherry blossom?”

“Yasha Orochimaru.”

Orochimaru straightened, his smile vanished and brow furrowed.

“Fascinating,” he murmured again. He turned to Sasuke.

“I’m going out for a few hours.” And then he was gone. Sasuke resisted the urge to frown and briefly entertained the idea of leaving. He had no reason to stay. Though the thought of Kabuto walking in and continuing the snake’s punishment was one he wasn’t fond of.

“Alone at last.”

She wasn’t looking at him when she spoke. Any trace of malice and amusement had left her face, and there was nothing but vague indifference now. It was unsettling how quickly she changed, especially given that those words would have ordinarily made her squeal with joy.

“You’d think I was a zoo animal.”

“Who are you?”

He regretted the words as soon as he’d spoken them. He hadn’t meant to say anything, but she was so different, so unlike the girl he knew that the question left him, laced with disgust. Her eyes met his and he knew instantly that when she’d said ‘alone at last’, she hadn’t meant ‘alone with him’. In a blink, that mad grin was back and her eyes shone bright under the white light.

“Hello, Uchiha.”

Her breathing was slow and deliberate, and it matched the seal’s strange shifting across her chest. He took a steadying breath.

“Who are you?” he repeated, his voice a little louder this time. She hummed and arched her back, her joints audibly popping and cracking. He had nowhere to look but at the dark scarring of the seal and, by consequence, her chest. He forced his eyes back to her face. She shifted on the table and looked up at him. And frowned.

“Where is your Sharingan?” she pouted. Sasuke blinked, feeling almost self-conscious under her disappointed appraisal.

“Who are you?” he said again, and she cocked her head.

“What’s an Uchiha without his Sharingan?”

His temper flared and he leaned forward, his palms resting on the icy table beside her.

“Who. Are. You?”

She giggled and whispered conspiratorially: “I am Death.”

And suddenly he was on his back, his arms pinned to his sides by her knees and his own fucking sword pressed to his throat. He swore under his breath and tried to wrench his hands free but she didn’t budge. She leaned forward and pressed her lips to his ear.

“Can I kill you, please?” she whispered, her voice calm and pleading. He clenched his jaw but said nothing, waiting for an opening, any opening.

“I bet your blood is as red as your Sharingan,” she mused, as she pulled away and sat back, throwing a glance over her shoulder. Sasuke took advantage and shifted so that his feet were flat and bucked her off, snatching his sword back as he rolled until it was her back pressed to the hard floor. She chuckled then, her eyes focused on his throat with a hunger that set him on edge. She could have thrown him across the lab anytime, Sasuke was well aware of that. But she lay perfectly still beneath him, the only part of her still moving was a single finger tapping the ground above her head where he held her wrists.

“What happened?”

She blinked up at him. “I want to kill you, but I don’t want to kill you.”

“What happened to you?”

“I tried to save Sasuke,” she said plainly, as though all the world should have known. “But he threw me away.”

He swallowed the words he wanted to say, that _he_ was Sasuke, and he hadn’t needed saving, and tried again.

“How can you be fixed?”

“Keep me and I’ll be okay,” she taunted, a sadistic smile playing on her bloodied lips. Furrowing his brow, he spoke again.

“What did Konoha do to you?” he demanded hoarsely, his grip on her wrists tightening. Her heart-shaped face emptied of all emotion, including insanity, and when she spoke it chilled him to the bone. Her voice was as empty as her face.

**~Sakura~**

She stood in the vast emptiness inside her, yelling into the abyss.

_I know him!_

The voice that answered was her own but colder, crueller. It hissed at her.

**No, you don’t. He is no one. He is prey.**

_You’re lying!_

She tried to clamp her hands over her ears, anything to make the voice just go away. But it laughed at her, derisive and callous, as she struggled against the indigo chains binding her to nothingness. It was within and without, the snicker coiling around her shaking limbs and resting on her neck. It purred into her ear.

**You are the one full of deceipt** , it sighed.

She felt claws of smoke and shadow piercing her chest and she fought a whimper. She’d felt so much more pain and yet this, this is what might break her. She looked up again, fighting to see with her own eyes, and caught a glimpse of him. He was pale and had hair blacker than the abyss she drowned in, and though his eyes swirled red, she couldn’t help but feel that she knew them to be dark. Almost black. It was the faint tingle of familiarity, the sense that she had known him, that she _had_ to know him, that fuelled her as she pooled the dregs of her remaining energy and fixed on the incessant tug at the very edge of consciousness.

And when she felt her lips part, she only managed a half truth.

**~Sasuke~**

“They stole my sun, and sent my moon away. He told me I’d get my sun back if I killed my moon. But I… loved my moon. Once. You look just like him,” she said blankly, staring deep into Sasuke’s wide eyes.

“Who? Who is he? What about the sun and moon?” he demanded, though he had a pretty good idea about the identities of her sun and moon.

“He? He is my master… And I must obey my master, or he’ll… throw me away,” she continued, blinking innocently while a cruel smile stretched her bruising cheeks. Sasuke watched in horror as the seal shifted again, creeping up her neck. Crushing the panic welling inside him, he released her hands and formed a hand seal.

“Kai,” he shouted. Nothing. She simply lay beneath him, watching him in some kind of warped awe. Slowly, she lifted a bloodstained hand to his face, unperturbed by his wariness.

“You look just like my moon,” she purred. Sasuke was at a loss; what the fuck was he supposed to do? He would have killed her, had she been anyone else. Why couldn’t he kill her? His thoughts prevented him from seeing the darkness consume her eyes, and he failed to notice her hand slipping around his throat until he felt a monstrous chakra flare. He was gone in a flash, pinning her front to the ground, one knee secure on her back, while his hands kept hers from moving.

“Don’t be mean, Uchiha,” she pouted. “We could have fun, you and I. Just let me end the Sannin and we can do whatever you want.”

She was lying and he knew it. He knew as soon as she was free, she’d kill everyone, including him. But he wasn’t afraid of dying by her hand. He didn’t think it was possible. But he knew he was more than capable of killing her. He’d even been willing to do so. Why wouldn’t he now? He said nothing and reached for the chains near his feet. She cocked her head at the clink of metal.

“You don’t have to fear me,” she coaxed. “I just want to kill the Sannin and go back to my master.”

“You just asked if you could kill me,” he shot back. She hummed in thought.

“Did I?” She flexed her hands experimentally and shrugged. “Must not have been me you were talking to.”

He desperately fought the shudder that crawled through his veins and secured her wrists behind her back, lifting her shockingly light body by her elbows and laying her back on the table.

“C’mon, Uchiha,” she coerced. “Unchain me and let’s play.”

He’d had just about enough; his heart raced and his head spun and he wanted _out_ so he could train, clear his head. He stalked toward the door and didn’t bother turning as he said: “Play with yourself.”

The sound of her mirthless cackles followed him out as he swung the door shut behind him.


	3. Falling Away From Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is late, I know, I'm so sorry. But as usual, this chapter was beta-read and edited by the fabulous Sahar, without whom my work would actually suck. Enjoy!

**Chapter 3**

“You’ve made no progress.”

Orochimaru looked up from his work and regarded Sasuke almost appreciatively. It made Sasuke’s skin crawl. The snake shook his head.

“Our little friend seems to be a lot more compatible with this seal than I’d initially thought,” he murmured, eyes flicking back to the calculations and formulas on his table. She was chained to the wall farthest from the door, a precaution thanks to her last attack, still but for the rise and fall of her chest and the pulse of the seal. Her eyes were shut but Sasuke knew she was awake. Listening.

“I took some samples and found that the seal is a concoction of chakra and her blood, but there are traces of foreign DNA.”

Sasuke chewed this bit of information over; he’d been right about the seal being her blood. The chakra was no surprise either, plenty of shinobi were able to materialise their chakra when needed. But the presence of foreign DNA made him anxious. Someone else’s blood, perhaps? Mixing the blood of two shinobi in fuinjutsu was not uncommon, but it was dangerous. And forbidden.

“Will you break it?”

Orochimaru’s lips stretched into a smile, and he laced his white fingers on the table in front of him. Sasuke knew the answer. Of course he would try to break the seal. The only way to discover who was behind it was by doing so. Or getting her to talk, which proved more infuriating than anything else.

“I will break it, Sasuke-kun,” Orochimaru assured him, his smile widening. Sasuke almost shrugged. He knew that. “The only question is when. And whether she will be cooperative.”

Sasuke narrowed his eyes, biting down on the violent urge to tear the smile from the snake’s face before he could so much as lay a hand on her.

“Do you have a better idea, Sasuke-kun?” Orochimaru asked. Maybe Sasuke hadn’t hidden the urge as well as he’d thought. He didn’t care.

“Any means necessary,” he ground out. A long silence followed. Orochimaru watched him, but there was concern in his curious gaze. Sasuke refused to look away, meeting the snake’s eyes head on with a glare of his own.

“I wonder,” Orochimaru started, his head tilting in thought. Sasuke stayed silent. “This girl is the one who came after you?”

Sasuke’s brows shot up involuntarily. How would he know? Sasuke hadn’t told a soul, hadn’t thought anyone would ever know.

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’,” he laughed. “Then I wonder if maybe you hold the key.”

Sasuke opened his mouth, unsure if it was to laugh or ask the snake what the fuck he was on, but he never got the chance to find out. A white snake appeared on the desk in a tiny puff of smoke, effectively cutting Sasuke off.

“Orochimaru-ssssama,” the summon greeted, bowing its head. “Newsss from Ame; their leadersss are on the move.”

Orochimaru inclined his head and the little snake vanished. He stood and walked around the desk, heading for the door. He threw a look over his shoulder at his ‘patient’ and addressed Sasuke.

“Speak to her, Sasuke-kun,” he said. “Maybe she just needs to hear the voice of her beloved.”

And with that teasing statement, he disappeared, leaving a very irritated Sasuke and an unconscious pinkette. Sasuke blew out a breath. ‘Speak to her’. Ridiculous, he told himself. He had spoken to her, more than he’d have liked had he still been 13. And their conversations definitely had yet to end with her spilling her master’s secrets. And he doubted that after all these years he was still the object of her affection. He doubted it very much. And he hated that the notion of her no longer loving him made his chest ache. Sasuke wasn’t stupid enough not to know why it hurt, and he wasn’t stupid enough to wonder what it meant.

He knew. He’d known the night he left, and he knew now.

Only, it didn’t matter anymore. Not that it had ever mattered, but it did so less now. He’d turned his back on all of them. On her. And he would again, if he had to.

But he turned to face her.

And, just this once, he whispered her name.

**~Sakura~**

She blinked, straining ears that weren’t hers anymore as a voice drifted through the darkness. _He_ was back. Again. She didn’t know why he almost never left, or why she cared that he didn’t.

Did she care?

**No, you don’t care. You only kill.**

But she hadn’t completed her mission. She hadn’t killed her target.

**You will, sweet thing.**

She quietened, reaching toward the voice pushing through, closer and closer.

The owner of the voice never said much, and yet she knew the sound. The voice was low, and indifferent; always indifferent, as it had been when... what? Why could she remember something that couldn’t possibly be hers to remember?

**You don’t remember.**

But she did. She remembered that this voice had been different, not as low, not as deep. But it was the same, winding itself through her; her skin, her bones, her veins. This voice was home and she held tight to it, this small piece of salvation. She didn’t wonder why it felt like home; she’d forgotten the concept of ‘home’, along with almost everything else, it seemed. But she remembered now, and she knew.

 This voice would save her.

**You cannot be saved.**

But she barely heard it, the murmur that crawled along her neck, dragging phantom claws along her jaw, because the voice finally reached her, with just one whispered word.

_Sakura_

She felt her heart stutter, and suddenly her vision flooded, sending the void staggering.

She saw a boy, the owner of the voice, only he was different. Younger, maybe. He lay on the ground before her in a dark forest and writhed in pain, his hand clutching her own.

The scene, was it... a memory? It must have been, she was looking through the eyes of a girl with pink hair. Maybe she was this girl. Or had been.

It disappeared before she could decide.

Again, she saw him. He sat in a hospital bed while she peeled apples.

Then another: he and a blond boy lunged at one another, furious and screaming. She tried to recall his name but she couldn’t, and she knew she should, but she watched as a shadow of herself was caught in the middle before a white-haired man grabbed the boys and hurled them apart.

She blinked.

It was darker, the new vision. So dark. It must have been midnight, and she realised she felt cold. For the first time in years, the barely familiar ache of ice prickled through her numbing veins. Instinctively, she wanted to close her eyes. This would hurt, whatever it was. And if she could feel cold, she could feel pain. She’d had enough of pain.

But she didn’t close her eyes; she looked up.

He was there again, standing beneath the moon.

_The moon._

He had his back turned to her, and she was numbly aware that her lips had been moving then. She tasted the words ‘happiness’ and ‘promise’ and ‘love’ as they fell from her lips and vanished. He turned then, smirking. She saw his own lips move and struggled to hear the single word that floated across the distance between them and settled in the depths of her soul.

‘Annoying.’

_Sasu-_

He was suddenly behind her, close enough that she could feel his breath on her neck as he whispered. She heard him this time, every one of her dulled senses turning razor sharp as the memory, she knows it’s _her_ memory now, speeds ahead and she knows. She knows him.

_Her moon._

‘Thank you.’

_Sasuke._

**~Sasuke~**

Her head lifted and she stared straight at him. Sasuke tensed, his hand on the hilt of his blade, and waited. He hadn’t imagined she’d actually open her eyes, let alone hear him. His heart slowed and he let his hand slip back to his side. She’d spent the last week stubbornly ‘asleep’ no matter what anyone did. She blinked once, twice, and smiled.

“Back again,” she rasped, leaning her head back against the stone wall behind her. Her eyes didn’t leave his. “People are going to get the wrong idea about us, y’know?”

He scowled, but he began to understand how it worked. How the seal changed her.

“Of course, there aren’t enough people to notice around here. Wonder why.”

She knew damn well why.

“Oh yeah! I killed them all.” She looked absolutely thrilled about it too. Sasuke chose not to comment. God knows she didn’t need encouragement from him when she was willing to talk. And he was right.

“That was fun. But now I’m bored,” she pouted. “And hungry.”

Sasuke raised a brow. She didn’t think he’d actually let her loose, did she?

“You give up so easily,” she sighed, extending her bare legs before her and crossing them at the ankle. “You used to be so determined, so _firm_.”

He would deny what the emphasis on ‘firm’ made his stomach do, even to himself. But she got his attention. Did she remember him?

“I didn’t think you knew who I was.”

She laughed, a soft lilting that echoed around him.

“I know very well who you are, Uchiha,” she said plainly, and cocked her head. Did she now? “You never gave up, not once. You always pulled through, even when it was impossible for anyone else.”

He frowned, wondering if it was the sound of her own name that brought this on. This was a different side of her. He’d seen her unbalanced and psychotic, but this was new.

“And then you gave up on us.”

He knew very well who she meant by ‘us’, and it wasn’t the whole of Konoha or the Rookies. It wasn’t even Team 7. His eyes dropped to her feet. ‘Giving up’ sounded very different to ‘betrayal’, and somehow it stung a little more as well.

“You gave up,” she repeated, flexing her wrists against the chains, and it seemed like she was speaking to herself rather than him. “You gave up.”

“Who is your master?”

“I will never give up on you,” she taunted, her voice so very like the one she’d used that night, that night that seemed so long ago. “I see the real you. Even if you don’t, I do.”

“This is the real me,” he argued, not meaning to say it aloud. Hadn’t he always tried to get her to see that? To get Naruto to see? “Who is your master?”

She shook her head.

“You ran, and you’re still running, Uchiha,” she said silkily. “I’ll be the one you run to.”

It was his turn to shake his head. She wasn’t making any sense again. Had her span of sanity run out already?

“I’ll show you the road to follow,” she insisted, eyes sparkling. “I’ll keep you safe, I’ll pull you from the depths of your despair.”

“You’re talking too much,” he sighed, trying to keep his temper under control. She giggled.

“I haven’t said enough, it seems.”

“You’ve said plenty.”

“Have I? You don’t really know me then.”

The truth of those words struck him with the force of a physical blow. He really didn’t know her. He felt like he was talking to a complete stranger, not the girl who’d once professed her love for him.

“It seems like I’ve known you forever,” she continued, leaning her head back against the wall behind her. “I’ll keep you sane, if you want. It’s alright, Uchiha. I see the real you.”

She kept saying that, ‘the real him’. He didn’t know how to respond. What could he say? Deny it, like he so very much wanted to? That felt childish, somehow. If he said nothing, what would that imply? That he needed or even wanted to accept her offer? And what exactly was she offering? The clink of metal and a soft laugh snagged his attention and his eyes snapped to her. She was leaning forward, looking so much like her 13 year old self, innocent and happy and endlessly hopeful.

“There you are,” she breathed. “Sasuke.”

He couldn’t stop the shiver that spider-walked down his spine when she said his name like… that. What the hell _was_ that? She’d certainly never spoken to him like that before. It unnerved him. Her voice was low and smooth, her tongue caressing his name in darkness; a silent promise. He’d never heard her speak to anyone like that; with such raw passion. Excitement, yes. Rage, plenty. Affection and adoration were songs of hers he knew by heart.

“I know you,” she repeated. “I know you more now than I did as a pathetic little girl, fawning over the tragic Uchiha orphan. I was so stupid. But now,” she purred, dark mirth curving her lips into a smile he could only describe as cat-like, predatory. “Now I know everything.”

“What could you possibly know?” he spat in a tone that would have once made her back off. Once, when she was a pathetic little girl. It was no surprise she didn’t back off now.

“I know what hides in your heart, what lurks deep within, what even the great Uchiha Sasuke doesn’t know.”

He’d already started walking away; she was rambling, clearly back to the insanity he was getting used to. He almost made it to the door.

“The crow told me.”

Sasuke felt the air ripped from his lungs as rage clawed at his insides. He turned.

She wasn’t looking at him, but past him, her eyes unfocused and her bottom lip between her teeth. The sight drove a hiss from his throat.

“What did the crow tell you?” he growled, feet anchored by his fury, hands curled to fists at his sides. She cocked her head as if in thought, her expression turning more dreamlike.

“He told me many things,” she breathed. “He told me that my master was a power-hungry maniac and that I’d do better with the crow. That I should join him. But my master wouldn’t like that, and I told the man with the pretty Sharingan so. He said I should find the one called Uchiha Sasuke.”

She giggled, and his fury was quickly dying, turning into wary disbelief.

“I told him I knew who that was; everyone knew Uchiha Sasuke, crazed avenger and traitor. I told him the one called Uchiha Sasuke was dead,” she chuckled, and Sasuke wondered if this story was indeed true and not a jumble of lies to keep him here.

“He didn’t like that.”

What?

_What?_

“He put me to sleep but he let me see what he saw. He was trying to find you, he was looking for you in my memories.” She laughed hard, the back of her head smacking the wall behind her. “Imagine that; he thought he’d find you in me! I told him you were dead to me and he let me wake up. He told me that if I found you, I wasn’t allowed to kill you. I was to tell you that only he could kill you. Only he could deal the killing blow that would finish what he started. So, don’t die, Sasuke. Not until he kills you.”

Sasuke’s mind spun with the information she threw at him.

“But-”

“What?” he growled. His patience had run out, and the grin slipped from her face like it’d been stolen. She blinked and swallowed, the first truly human gesture he’d seen from her since she’d first arrived months ago.

“He’s dead,” she murmured; quiet as though the words she spoke would slice through flesh. And they did. “The crow wasn’t quick enough, couldn’t fly fast enough.”

No.

_No_.

Itachi was not dead. Sasuke tried to force the words from his mouth but he couldn’t. His heart thundered in his ears and he staggered toward her, dropping to his haunches in front of her. She had the good sense to wince when he leaned forward and rested his palms on either side of her head.

“Who?” was all he managed to rasp out. The screams fighting their way up his throat would win if she didn’t answer. They might either way, but he tried to quiet them anyway. Her eyes fluttered closed and she took a deep breath.

“They call him Pain,” she whispered. “He knew the crow would betray him. The crow lies in Ame, under the protection of their Angel.”

Sasuke scowled, his head bowed in frustration. Everything he’d worked for, all the training and all the work. All the betrayal. For nothing, if what she said was true. The chains clinked and drew his attention. She was squirming, the steel slicing through her bruised skin with ease as she tried to work her hands free. He blinked.

She was trying to reach for him.

He was sure of it. Her bottom lip was caught between her teeth, the corners of her mouth pulled down and tears clung to the grime on her cheeks.

“Sasuke.” Her voice broke and she pulled harder. “I’m so sorry.”

He pushed away, getting to his feet and taking a few steps away from her. She may have been crying, but he wouldn’t let her lay a hand on him until he knew for sure she wouldn’t try to kill him. She looked up at him, eyes imploring as he backed away, and he had no words for her.

He turned his back on her and walked out, ignoring the gasp of pain she left in his wake.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fic that ruined sleep for me for weeks and practically demanded to be written. It is heavily inspired by one of my favourite albums (a dead give away, if you know the lyrics) and a song that never fails to bring out the psycho within. This entire idea became a fic only thanks to my favourite writer/beta reader Sahar-Chan, who told me I had to finish it, and edited (and will edit) the entire damn thing (coz I can't post unedited writing, no one would understand anything!).


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